How fearful were you as a child?

@dlowan,

Quote:

I empathize with them.
I was mildly ill-at-ease, until I got my first gun:
THAT instilled me ABRUPTLY with a lot of confidence and peace of mind.
I kept that .38 Smith & Wesson revolver close at hand, by day and by night,
until I upgraded to a .44 some years later.

HAPPINESS is a small framed revolver & plenty of ammo.

David

1 Reply

@dlowan,

Quote:

I empathize with them.
I was mildly ill-at-ease, until I got my first gun:
THAT instilled me ABRUPTLY with a lot of confidence and peace of mind.
I kept that .38 Smith & Wesson revolver close at hand, by day and by night,
until I upgraded to a .44 some years later.

HAPPINESS is a small framed revolver & plenty of ammo.

David

0 Replies

@dlowan,

Quote:

I empathize with them.
I was mildly ill-at-ease, until I got my first gun:
THAT instilled me ABRUPTLY with a lot of confidence and peace of mind.
I kept that .38 Smith & Wesson revolver close at hand, by day and by night,
until I upgraded to a .44 some years later.

HAPPINESS is a small framed revolver & plenty of ammo.

David

0 Replies

@dlowan,

Quote:

I empathize with them.
I was mildly ill-at-ease, until I got my first gun:
THAT instilled me ABRUPTLY with a lot of confidence and peace of mind.
I kept that .38 Smith & Wesson revolver close at hand, by day and by night,
until I upgraded to a .44 some years later.

HAPPINESS is a small framed revolver & plenty of ammo.

David

0 Replies

@dlowan,

Quote:

I empathize with them.
I was mildly ill-at-ease, until I got my first gun:
THAT instilled me ABRUPTLY with a lot of confidence and peace of mind.
I kept that .38 Smith & Wesson revolver close at hand, by day and by night,
until I upgraded to a .44 some years later.

HAPPINESS is a small framed revolver & plenty of ammo.

David

0 Replies

@dlowan,

Quote:

I empathize with them.
I was mildly ill-at-ease, until I got my first gun:
THAT instilled me ABRUPTLY with a lot of confidence and peace of mind.
I kept that .38 Smith & Wesson revolver close at hand, by day and by night,
until I upgraded to a .44 some years later.

HAPPINESS is a small framed revolver & plenty of ammo.

David

0 Replies

@dlowan,

Quote:

I empathize with them.
I was mildly ill-at-ease, until I got my first gun:
THAT instilled me ABRUPTLY with a lot of confidence and peace of mind.
I kept that .38 Smith & Wesson revolver close at hand, by day and by night,
until I upgraded to a .44 some years later.

HAPPINESS is a small framed revolver & plenty of ammo.

David

0 Replies

@dlowan,

Quote:

I empathize with them.
I was mildly ill-at-ease, until I got my first gun:
THAT instilled me ABRUPTLY with a lot of confidence and peace of mind.
I kept that .38 Smith & Wesson revolver close at hand, by day and by night,
until I upgraded to a .44 some years later.

HAPPINESS is a small framed revolver & plenty of ammo.

David

0 Replies

@dlowan,

Quote:

I empathize with them.
I was mildly ill-at-ease, until I got my first gun:
THAT instilled me ABRUPTLY with a lot of confidence and peace of mind.
I kept that .38 Smith & Wesson revolver close at hand, by day and by night,
until I upgraded to a .44 some years later.

HAPPINESS is a small framed revolver & plenty of ammo.

David

0 Replies

@dlowan,

Quote:

I empathize with them.
I was mildly ill-at-ease, until I got my first gun:
THAT instilled me ABRUPTLY with a lot of confidence and peace of mind.
I kept that .38 Smith & Wesson revolver close at hand, by day and by night,
until I upgraded to a .44 some years later.

HAPPINESS is a small framed revolver & plenty of ammo.

David

1 Reply

I apologize for so many redundant, multiplicate posts.
My computer kept telling me that each post failed to go thru,
and I BELIEVED this false representation.

Sorry.

0 Replies

@OmSigDAVID,

Okay David, we totally "get" that owning a gun made you feel brave and powerful. We understand.

Some people are afraid of things that can't be shot or killed in any way. Guns would not help them feel brave and confident. Please try to understand that gun ownership is not the answer for everyone.

2 Replies

@boomerang,

boomerang wrote:

oh, is that what he's trying to say Wink

0 Replies

@boomerang,

Quote:

Boomer, I was trying to express the idea that possession of a competent means
of personal defense relieved me of the pain of FEAR, helping me to feel safe & secure,
not so much that I felt "brave". I was never tempted to go out n conquer the world.

Quote:

I thought we were contemplating n discussing children who lived in fear
of being kidnapped, because this fate had befallen one of them. Correct me, if I am in error.

Quote:

I beg to DIFFER.
If people live in fear of kidnapping, or other violent crime,
then their possessing of the means of defeating kidnapping
shoud offer them peace of mind, at least in substantial part,
if not completely.

Quote:

Maybe ardent Quakers, Amish or hoplophobes woud not derive
the optimal benefits of the security of self-defense.
I support the right of suicide.

However, Man is a being who accomplishes his will
by the use of TOOLS; thay r how we rose to the top of the food chain.
Different jobs r successfully completed by the use of different tools,
that r particuarly adapted for each of those jobs; e.g., one who wishes
to calculate his taxes, will not use a hammer to do so.

Similarly, one who wishes to take control of the situation
to preserve his existence during a predatory emergency will be well advised to use a gun.

David

2 Replies

@OmSigDAVID,

OmSigDavid, the child who was kidnapped at the time was, like me, about 6 or 7 years old. I don't think a firearm would have been a realistic means of protecting himself, even if he had managed to bring it into the store with him.

1 Reply

@OmSigDAVID,

No, we are not discussing children who live in fear of kidnapping, we are talking about things that children are afraid of and a couple of people mentioned kidnapping. I think, in general, adults are much more afraid of kidnapping than children are.

You said you were afraid of "criminal intrusion" and a gun gave you "confidence" and "peace of mind".

Fine.

But I wish you would quit insisting that it is the answer to childhood fears. It was the answer to your childhood fears. We get it.

1 Reply

@FreeDuck,

Quote:

U coud be RIGHT. (Maybe)
Even police and soldiers who 've had experience with guns
don t win EVERY fight, but thay do better than thay woud
if thay were unarmed.

In the case of the child in question,
it coud not have gone worse than it already DID;
(I take it that he failed to survive ??)
Admittedly, I did not have a functional gun when I was 7.
The best weapon that I then had was a homemade knife.
I did not acquire my first gun until I was 8.

Anyway, if u r going to fall to the depredations of man or beast,
u may as well go down fighting, to degrade the enemy 's offensive capability
or just to inflict vengeance upon your tormentor.

I saw that on TV recently:
an elderly couple were peacefully hiking thru the woods (unarmed).
Thay had done so before, uneventfully.
Then the husband was pounced upon by a hungry young cougar.
He fought back. His wife, who appears to have liked him,
joined in his defense, by smacking the cougar with a nearby
wooden club. After a while, the cougar apparently decided
it was not worth the trouble and retreated.

I coud not help wishing that the elderly lady had possession
of a .44 Magnum (like my Ruger SuperBlackhawk).
Thay both survived, after hospitalization.

U mentioned a 7 year old child.
I am reminded of a singularly horrific & abhorent crime upon a boy of 7,
whose account I saw on TV some years ago.
He was enjoying use of his bike after dinner one evening,
when a pervert grabbed him off of it, and cut his throat
from ear to ear. Leaving him for dead, he cut off the boy 's penis.
The boy survived, but must live out his life in an emasculated condition.
I can 't help wishing that he had been able to successfully fight back.
That coud only happen if he had the necessary EQUIPMENT to do it.
I suspect that a hollowpointed .38 slug in the pervert 's groin
might have slowed him down.

For the same reason that thay teach swimming in schools
(presumably to reduce drownings) thay shoud also teach self defense.
That 's what the Director of Civilian Marksmanship Program
(established around the First World War) was for.

David

0 Replies

@boomerang,

Quote:

I clicked the reply button on the post of someone
who lamented juvenile fear of kidnapping,
because another child had been KIDNAPPED.
I addressed myself specifically to the contents of that post.
That 's what we DO on this forum; comment upon one another's posts.

Quote:

The way u wrote that, it looks as if I had claimed
that possession of guns will end ALL childhood fears.
I did not allege that guns are panaceas.
I will freely concede that if a child is afraid of flunking a spelling test
or if he fears for his mother 's health, the remedy to this will not be found in guns.

David

0 Replies

Not fearful with respect to boogy men, etc. Didn't notice any fear among my (6) sisters, either, but that doesn't mean much - they could have just not said them aloud.

We lived for a time in a high crime area but we weren't afraid, just more watchful. There were a lot of flashers about, as I recall, which were disgusting but harmless. And we learned that the hardened criminal types mainly hurt each other, not innocent people. You just get street savvy. But this is kind of off-topic, isn't it?

I guess the only thing we all really feared was my mother. She got really vicious when she was mad and you never knew what was coming at you.

1 Reply

@Mame,

Funny the parent fear...I remember a friend of mine from Japan that told me when she was child, they learned there were only two things to be fearful of: earthquakes and your father.

1 Reply

How fearful were you as a child?

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